A moderately irritated girl scout could beat most woo-MA instructors, because they are no better at fighting than anybody else, and often worse.
If you beat a full-contact athlete your own size with tai chi, that would be news and you should seriously consider releasing your own line of books and videos. Otherwise, it's no more impressive than beating up a layperson.
We're mostly on the same page here. My question -- comment, really -- is simply "what do you mean by "woo-MA instructors"?
The instructors I beat didn't advertise themselves as "woo-MA"; they claimed to be teaching effective fighting techniques. I think one of them described his style as something like "Fire Dragon Kung-fu," which at least superficially sounds like it would be at least as effective as Monkey Boxing or Praying Mantis style Kung-fu, both of which are respected and reasonably effective striking arts. (I don't remember the other style name(s).) Similarly, having watched and participated in the classes, they weren't run as a typical taiji "let's run through this dance form very very slowly while I tell you you're becoming invulnerable." The instructors did the usual set of punches, kicks, blocks, etc, then moved on to fixed-form sparring.
I think that the instructors would have considered themselves to be "full-contact athletes."
They were just incompetent practitioners. Probably of "modern" arts that were invented by someone without much fight experience himself, and passed on to his "disciples" without proper debugging.
My point, though, is that you can't tell just from looking at the name printed on the storefront whether the art taught there is any good. You can't even necessarily tell from watching the students drill.
Taiji, for all its faults in modern teaching, is a time-tested martial art that can be done very effectively if properly taught. For a long time, practitioners and styles of taiji that weren't good enough tended not to teach, through the minor character flaw of being dead or disabled. It's no longer considered good form to wander into a training hall unannounced and kick the master's ass if he's not skilled enough. Which means that bad taiji teaching can flourish -- but so can bad teaching of Muay Thai, or "Red Dragon Kung-fu."
I would actually be very interested in hearing about what you do in the non-watered-down tai chi training. I suspect it's not much like what our little friend Tai Chi does at his training sessions. Or if it is, I'd question its status as not watered down.
I've never trained with Tai Chi, so I don't know what he does. I suspect you're right, though. We do (did, rather) a variety of different forms, including at different speeds (including combat speed as well as the super-slow). We did various forms of push-hands, including at full speed and strength, and everything from fixed-pattern to free-form. One of the simpler but more interesting exercises was essentially a boxing/wrestling match; free-form "push hands" with two rules. First, don't hurt your partner, and second, the first one to move his heels loses. I didn't like it because a lot of the "power" moves in T'ai Chi require leg movement, so I'd often lose by shifting my weight to set up something like a (simulated) arm break. But that's more my problem than the art's....
But regardless of what I do differently than T'ai Chi (or not) -- the reason I claim that my version isn't watered down is because I've used it effectively, against "trained" opponents. Sure, their training wasn't that good -- I don't claim to be able to fight in the UFC. But in my book, any fight that I can walk away from and you can't is one that I won -- and any techniques that helped me win are effective fighting techniques.
